Significant others
by Madhumalati
Summary: Hiei thinks about the people in his life and what they mean to him. A set of not so short drabbles. Part 5: Yukina and love. Last: Kurama: understanding.
1. Yusuke

_**Significant Others**_

Yusuke is loyalty.

In his century-old life, Hiei has never met anyone quite like the Spirit Detective; nor has he met anyone since who is such a complete antithesis of his own character but who accepts him. Why this boy, who works on the 'good' side, should so easily accept Hiei – criminal, murderer – as one of his own, and fight for him, puzzles Hiei. Hiei has always fought for himself; every scrap of food and every night's sleep the result of ceaseless struggle. To meet someone who fights for others is rare enough; it is almost dizzying, like breathing thin air, to meet someone who fights for _him_. Why would anyone want anything to do with the Forbidden Child? But Yusuke doesn't even seem to notice what he is; who he is seems to be enough. Loyalty, friendship, given without the slightest expectation of recompense; what a gift for one who was never given anything without strings attached, without harsh prices, not even life. And it is amazing, what he does to Hiei; until he met Yusuke, he never knew what it was to give loyalty, to stand beside another and fight; to seek vengeance even when his death was certain. It is hardly surprising that he is the one Hiei thinks of as loyalty; that he is, ultimately, the one he will fight beside. He owes him that much, for teaching him that in everyone there is something of worth, for teaching him the meaning of fidelity.


	2. Kuwabara

Kuwabara is honour.

His sheer persistence amazes Hiei sometimes; the way he sees the world in a different light – dare he say, a purer light – and somehow manages to hold on to that ideal despite all the evil surrounding him. His honour code is absurd, impractical, a fool's effort to maintain chivalry in a world that punishes anything moral; strange, Hiei thinks, that his eccentric ideas seem to triumph over the certainty of all those who resist him. It is honour that drives him on, long past the point where everyone else would have given up; honour that gives him the strength of will to believe in the essential goodness of life beyond all Hiei's cynicism. In him, Hiei sees the seeds of a better world, sees that honour that he himself could never afford to have, sees that innocent courage, filled with knowledge of its own inner truth, that his life never gave him the opportunity to have. And so he jeers at him, rails against his attitudes in secret bitterness his own compassion feels; sneers at his ideals because he knows what will happen to those who hold that sincerity, that purity. He has seen his own stripped away, and he waits for it to happen to Kuwabara, but it doesn't, and that is the most bitter thing of all. But he cannot grudge him his luck; can only wish it was his own, and stick all the more doggedly to his own sense of right and wrong. Kuwabara is a talisman, a hope he holds up to defend his right to be honourable, his right to integrity.

A/N: next: hope. Cookies to anyone who can guess who it is. By the way, there will be no pairing implications in this set, so I'm valiantly suppressing my HK brain. You have three characters to choose from: Mukuro, Kurama and Yukina. I may add Shigure later but I don't have him planned out; I can't quite decide what their relationship was.


	3. Mukuro

Mukuro is hope.

He sees in her present his possible future. They are drawn by common struggle. Both tied to their pasts; both determined to break free of it. Hiei does not tolerate weakness or incompetence; if someone has his company they have earned his respect. It is a mark of this respect that they fought; that Hiei threw everything he had against her. He admires her, strength and courage, grit and determination; why else would he fight her with such sincerity? Kindred souls, they are; and in her he finds his own possibility of one day making his peace with himself, of breaking the shackles that lie around his wrists, made not of cold steel but icy rejection.

A/N: the next will be Koenma, and the quality fate. Thank you all for your reviews, and points to BubblyFerryGirl for getting it right!


	4. Koenma

Koenma is fate.

It is the mark of a Forbidden Child to lose everything. To fail. To despair. Ultimately, to die early and pointlessly, while no one mourns his passing. The little godling embodies that fate. In his disapproving prejudiced eyes Hiei can see every bias, every condemnation ever heaped against him from the day he was born. Unfair that even Kurama, who is as demonic as he and twice as ruthless, can gain favour simply by being physically human. He is the symbol of everything Hiei hates; incapable of understanding that some things need to be looked at closer, perceived on a deeper level. Hiei is many things, but he is not simple, and a mind caught up in terms of black and white – human and not human, Spirit World and not Spirit World – cannot perceive the shade of grey he calls his own. And what difference does it make? None, except to provide Hiei with greater impetus to succeed, to throw his success in the teeth of those who wouldn't believe; or to give up, let go and prove them all right. Balanced between two impulses, he lives.

A/N: the next one is 'love', and the last will be 'understanding'. Points, as always, to anyone who guesses right!


	5. Yukina

Yukina is love.

An emotion he denied himself all these frozen years, one he had severed from him as surely as his people had cast him off. Why it has crept up and taken him unawares after so long, he does not know. She is his other half; she has grown in all the caring and affection he never received. Perhaps it is the echo of something that could have been his that haunts him. Belonging. Affection. Freedom to feel. Simply living. None of these are his, he knows, and since she embodies all of these, he cannot have her either. But he is drawn to her, by shared blood and by something far less defined, and so he watches her, denying himself the right to be closer than the others. He can never call her sister, he knows, because he is unworthy of the right; he clings to that belief despite the evidence; despite those who urge him to tell her.

A/N: Cookies to everyone who got it right. Detailed acknowledgments in the next chapter, it's the middle of the night here and I am oh-so-sleepy...understanding is next, no points for guessing since there's only one character left.


	6. Kurama

Kurama is understanding.

They don't share many words – they don't need to. If there is anyone who understands the totality of Hiei, it is Kurama. The Forbidden Child and the perfect student have more in common than most think. Thieves, outlaws, half-breeds, hated and feared, they have tasted the thrill of freedom and the addiction of power; they know what it is to live by no rule but the sword, to run wild and run alone. But Hiei's solitude was enforced, not sought, and his fiery confidence is shallower than most imagine. His pride does not permit him to seek others out; his vulnerability does not allow others to help him. So he takes comfort on a windowsill and tastes acceptance in food sneaked out from under a mother's eye; so he can feel the closest to tranquillity in silence and sparring and gentle, pointed mockery. They don't discuss mothers, childhood, family, home or dead partners; take pleasure in being uncomplicated. It is soothing to be away from the grinding circle of his past, to simply _be_, in some strange alternate dimension they create in which they are completely normal.

A/N: Cookies Kaori Minamino and BubblyFerryGirl for getting the Kurama and Yukina drabbles right! This is the last, as far as I know; thanks to my reviewers. You've been great, all of you.


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